Light’s Better Here
There’s an old joke about a man searching in the gutter under a streetlight. A passerby asks him what he’s doing.
“Looking for my car keys,” replies the man.
“Where did you drop them?” asks the passerby.
“Over there,” says the man, pointing into the inky darkness down the street.
“Then why aren’t you looking there?” responds the passerby in amazement.
“The light’s better here.”
Although ludicrous, like many jokes its humor comes, as it were, from the light it sheds on an important aspect of human behavior. Given the choice between poking around blindly in the dark or looking in the light, most people will choose the latter.
I can already hear the cries of, “But wait a second! That’s nonsense. Why would anyone in their right mind deliberately look where they know the keys are not?”
Why indeed? The fact is, we already have our answer: “the light’s better.” The real question is what does that actually mean?
Read the rest in the Messenger.
